From the email jobs board (names suppressed to protect the guilty):
Acting as an ambassador for the Group Communications function you will work across a wide range of internal and external communications. You will be working with some of the most talented and influential figures in the publishing field with the opportunity to create ties with the company’s impressive global afflictions.
Whatever that client is paying that recruitment consultancy is far, far too much.
The Tories abandoned the usual Party Political broadcast format this evening, in favour of an appeal from a range of Ministers and others on behalf of the East African famine crisis. Twitter’s response so far has been mixed – from Jon Gaunt castigating them for “using dying kids to get votes” to others describing it as “decidedly different” and “random” – there will no doubt be a more varied response if it’s repeated after the news at 10, when the politicos settle down with their cocoa and get ready to luxuriate in Newsnight. I’ll look out for the debate.
With much relief I can reveal that I disagree with Gaunty.
Personally I think it might be the most interesting piece of political PR the Tories have done in a long time, as well as a pragmatic response to a difficult content issue.
What would have been the point of a standard pitch for votes when the nearest election where those votes might be useful is far over the horizon? And what could they say about policy and politics which doesn’t raise the spectres of the many, many problems the electorate are currently facing and drag down the public mood? So why not try something to position the Tories as caring and generous and concerned with bigger issues than petty politics? Why not use it as an opportunity to humanise the party a bit – getting away from the notion that they’re just posh, white men in suits – and let them send themselves up a bit? Why not stress the party’s commitment to international aid – a rare example of policy that appeals to people from beyond the traditional Tory vote? Oh, and in the process, why not try to raise some money for an extremely good cause?
They’ve obviously decided that the risks – that people will see it as exploiting human tragedy or a way of ducking out of a conversation about domestic politics – are worth taking. It’s not been a great week for the Tories’ PR machine what with the cat flap, and the hasty re-write of the Leader’s speech – but this is an intriguing note to end on. Smart PR, cynical stunt, generous gesture or all three?
The story that the government wants to woo back women voters was headline news last week, though probably not getting the kind of headlines they would have wanted.
The plans: shortening school holidays to make things easier for working women, banning advertising to under-16s and overhauling child benefit, made the classic assumption that women’s interests are limited to children’s issues. The idea that family policy and women’s issues are the same (whereas men get to be interested in all kinds of things, even if they have children and families too) received short shrift from women, already anxious about the impact of government policy on women’s lives .
Sadly the Labour Party hasn’t got past the women = children stage either. Despite no longer being a member, I was invited to submit ideas to the party’s National Women’s Conference yesterday. Under the headline What Women Want I was invited to propose “policies which will deliver for women” because: “Labour women have experience and expertise across a vast range of areas”. So why have they asked us to think about:
My rather snarky reply was for them to stop acting as though the only issues that women care about are family related and start thinking about issues which affect women whether they have kids or not (and are not family/health-related which affect men just as much as women and need to be pulled out of the “women’s issues” ghetto).
Strengthening protection for victims of sexual and domestic violence was one area which sprang to mind – particularly as it is coming under attack on a number of different fronts at the moment.
Other areas in need of work are the gender pay gap and the unequal representation of women in senior jobs – this is slightly different to “supporting women at work” which I took to be a reference to the childcare/flexible working debate.
There’s lots of room for improvement. Research out in August suggested female executives will have to wait until 2109 before their average salary catches up with their male peers’. Last year the government abandoned compulsory pay audits which were an attempt to close the pay gap. Sex and Power, a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned it will take 70 years to achieve an equal number of women MPs, that the number of women in the Cabinet has fallen to its lowest level in a decade and that women are in short supply at the top of the media, business, the judiciary, the arts and education.
Get some of that lot sorted out and perhaps politicians will see that women are more than “just” mums – because more of them will look like us.
Nick Clegg is to announce that he will be spending £50m to set up summer schools for children on the verge of starting secondary school as a “compassionate response” to last month’s riots.
I’m all in favour of anything being provided for young people, who seem to be at the sharp end of a lot of current cuts. But I do have some questions:
And here are some more rhetorical questions: Is this anything more than a media gimmick to give Clegg a soundbite for his conference speech? What’s the betting that we will hear this wheeled out over the coming months as an example of how the Lib Dems are stamping their belief in fairness all over the Coalition? Is there any wonder that another speedy response to the riots concluded that lack of trust in politicians was a cause? Could Ministers attend summer schools in practical policy making next year, instead of pandering to their conference audiences? What do you think?
- Pink moisture glasses keep your eyes refreshed
- Versetta iPad handbag doubles as a workstation
- Ultimate beauty iPhone app saves you time in Selfridges
- Jawbone wristband tracks your diet, exercise and sleep
- Burg 5 watch, even in pink, fails to tick right boxes
- HTC set to release Glamour smartphone just for women
- Microsoft reveals the Comfort Keyboard
- iPad kangaroo pouch coming soon
I guess this either makes you laugh hysterically or it doesn’t.*
It reminded me of an old piece by Alan Coren about a new car aimed at the “typical female” customer which failed because:
at 35mph the linkage connecting the hairdryer to the eye-level grill snapped, disconnected the telephone and threw the crib through the windscreen. Upon applying the brakes the driver inadvertently set the instant heel-bar in motion and was riveted to the wardrobe by a row of tin tacks.
I suppose at least he had the excuse of writing in 1974, some time before feminism got into its stride (and of being a comic genius who rarely put a foot wrong). Not sure what the bloggers’ excuse is.
* these are real stories from a real blog, which I’m not linking to because it doesn’t deserve the traffic
Having spent last night watching Hackney burning on TV and listening to police sirens screaming past on the road outside, I appreciate that there are more important issues at stake than David Cameron’s PR. But, this blog is supposed to be about communications, so what the hell:
Who on earth is in charge of Tory PR? And why did they not have the PM on a plane back from Tuscany immediately after the first night of rioting in London?
For once I have some sympathy for the politicians – what on earth do we expect them to do when they get back? As Shaun Bailey put it on Newsnight :
“This is the thing that the media have been most childish about. Do you think that David Cameron’s going to go down there with a shield and deal with the kids in Tottenham and then run over to Hackney? We have a mechanism. This is a big sophisticated society. The police are here … we have leaders. We have a Deputy Prime Minister, a Deputy Mayor, we have all manner of people. The point is this, they are not the people who will put this problem right. This problem is in our communities and in our economy. What are our young people going to do for a job? … We have lost control of our young people and that is our responsibility not politicians’ “
But whether there’s a practical need for them to be here or not, the image projected by the absence of senior ministers is poisonous to the Tories because it suggests that either:
I think it’s the last one that’s the one that’s most damaging. Cameron, Boris, Osborne, privately educated, Bullingdon-clubbers and multi-millionaires to a man, they already look startingly out of touch with “real people”. It’s all too easy to imagine that they couldn’t care less about what happens on Mare Street.
Cameron cares about his image – that’s why he was so sensitive to criticism for not tipping a waitress that he went back to find her. But his priorities are badly wrong. He should have been here, striding purposefully about in Tottenham, talking to residents with a furrowed brow, sympathising with distraught shop-keepers and homeowners and promising that help is on its way.
Of course he’s back now, but it’s too late. In PR terms the damage is done. The mood music is clear – they don’t care, they don’t act, we’re all in this together at the mercy of the mob, they’re enjoying holidays in expensive private villas. They’re the nasty party again. Little by little the brand is being re-toxified.
When I moved to London to seek my fame and fortune I worked as a temp, making tea for the Head of HR at Channel 4. I’d graduated to picking up dry-cleaning for the Head of Comms before I landed a job in the press office. I loved every minute of it – just as well as I “temped” there for almost a year. Since then I’ve been a self-employed consultant and an interim manager in a range of organisations, so I’ve spent almost half of my working life without benefit of holiday pay, sick pay or employers’ pension contributions. This has been my choice and I’m not looking for sympathy, but it does mean that I know a bit about what it’s like at the sharp end of what is usually referred to as Britain’s flexible labour market.
New regulations to drown temp industry?
New regulations coming in this October will give temps and agency workers greater employment protection after they’ve been working for a company for 12 weeks. Or, as the Telegraph put it: New regulations will drown temp industry.
Warning that unemployment will rise as companies off-load temps they can’t afford, the Telegraph warns that fewer jobs will now be created.
“No regulations and no left-wing shit”
I’d expect the Telegraph to back the bosses, so the opposition didn’t surprise me. I’d argue that if you’re temping for a company for three months you’re doing a job not providing holiday cover, so you ought to have the same rights as your permanently employed colleague at the next desk. One of the comments underneath the story is a bit of an eye-opener though:
It’s better to have a chat with agency staff, cut out the middleman and give everyone a better cash deal. This is what I do. No employment regs, no nonsense and no left-wing shit. Any problems and the company will start up next week with a slightly different name.
Let’s pass over thoughts of how that “better cash deal” might be administered, and ask instead – when did offering reasonable employment protection to working people become “left-wing shit”? Are we really saying that nothing is as important as maximizing profit? That only bleeding heart liberals care about people’s rights?
Maybe the fact that I’m reading Chavs at the moment made the comment leap out at me. Here’s author Owen Jones on the rise and rise of the “flexible workforce”:
We have been witnessing the slow death of the secure, full-time job, There are up to 1.5million temporary workers in Britain. A “temp” can be hired and fired at an hour’s notice, paid less for doing the same job and lacks rights such as paid holiday and redundancy pay. Agency work is thriving in the service sector, but an incident at a car plant near Oxford in early 2009 illustrates where the rise of the temp has brought us. Eight hundred and fifty temps – many of whom had worked in the factory for years – were sacked by BMW with just one hour’s notice … The workers, with no means of defending themselves from this calamity resorted to pelting managers with apples and oranges … It’s not just agency and temporary workers who suffer because of job insecurity and outrageous terms and conditions. Fellow workers are forced to compete with people who can be hired far more cheaply. Everyone’s wages are pushed down as a result. This is the race to the bottom of pay and conditions.”
Agency Workers Regulations 2011
For anyone interested, here’s the TUC’s guide to agency workers’ rights and guidance on the Agency Workers Regulations which come into force in October. And for the record, I’m with the bleeding heart liberals on this one.
Lots in the papers about the damage being done to the voluntary sector by cuts in public funding, which has started another round of the “are charities too dependent on state funding?” debate.
Harry Cole is arguing in the Guardian that cuts will allow market forces to prevail, with “good” charities surviving while their flabbier, lazier brethren – the ones who can’t wean themselves off the tit of public funding – go to the wall. In the end we will just have the charities that the public wants to pay for. His link to the story was followed appropriately, in my Twitter stream, by a tweet from the RSPCA listing the impressive number of warders and rescue centres they fund completely from public donation.
Well, I’m tempted to say that that’s all very well for the RSPCA. The British public are always happy to give to puppies and kittens with a hard luck story. (I’ve been talked into re-homing 3 rescue cats myself. I’m not immune to the madness).
You know who doesn’t do so well out of public giving? Drug addicts. And old people, particularly those with dementia. Refugees aren’t high on the list. Nor are victims of domestic violence. Or ex-offenders.
Fundraising works fine when you’re promoting a service the public feel emotionally warm about – cancer, children, abused donkeys – (the top ten charities by donation in 2006 were Cancer Research UK, Oxfam, National Trust, British Heart Foundation, RNLI, NSPCC, Salvation Army, Macmillan Cancer Relief, RSPCA, Save the Children). We are surpassingly generous in times of natural disaster. But services many – shall we say less-photogenic – people depend on wouldn’t exist if it was left up to us to put our hands in our pockets.
Calling them charities is a misnomer these days. Lots of third sector/ voluntary sector bodies are effectively small businesses working as not for profit arms of the public services. I can’t say I mind. Personally I care more about private sector companies making sizeable profits from government contracts to provide public services, but I guess a mixed-economy of providers is a good thing. What we’re really talking about when we mention cuts to voluntary sector funding is cutting the services that the voluntary sector provides. I’d much rather the focus was on that rather than arguing about whether we need a survival of the fittest, fight to the death funding strategy for charities.
In years to come the News International phone hacking saga will be taught on PR courses as a textbook case of how not to handle a PR crisis. Here’s why:
1. Caught in a crisis the response should be quick, consistent and open. NI let the story about hacking rumble on for months, claiming all the while that it was a problem with one rogue operator. Sticking to an incomplete story is a guarantee of greater problems down the line when the full story comes out. Which it will. ‘Fess up straight away if you’re in the wrong, it gives you some control over the story if it isn’t dribbling out over a long period as new allegations arise. Most experts agree that an attempted cover up can cause bigger headaches than the original sin.
2. If you’re in the wrong, apologise – fully and sincerely, and start talking about what changes you’re going to make to ensure that this never happens again. Presumably under the influence of their new PR company, NI are now set to run full-page ads in the papers apologising for what’s happening. Rebekah Brooks’ initial statement declaring that it was inconceivable that she knew about hacking Milly Dowler’s phone fell several miles short of what was required.
Until the new PRs got to work, there hadn’t been much in the way of apology to the victims from anyone at NI. Today’s meeting between Rupert Murdoch and Milly Dowler’s family may be a first step to recognising that this is a tactical mistake (as well as being morally indefensible…)
3. A bit of humility doesn’t hurt. James Murdoch’s refusal to appear before the Select Committee because the date was inconvenient was cringeworthy. Worse was Rupert’s apparent insistence to the Wall St Journal that the company had been handling the issue extremely well.
4. Think about the information that everyone involved will need. This includes regulators, customers, investors, suppliers, victims and – a crucial group that NI has rather ignored – your own staff. Former News of the World staff, sacked a week before Rebekah Brooks felt compelled to go, may feel this element of the crisis could have been better handled…
and most importantly
5. You need to be prepared. NI don’t seem to have had a Head of Comms working on this until this January. so no wonder their responses have been flat-footed. It’s worth:
Sole Trader PR 